accidentally twinning with my girl / perfect spring evening in our backyard / spontaneous afternoon ice creams and the giant "singles" from Handel's Ice Cream

Hello May! Our front and back yards are full of spring and it's bringing me joy. Our palo verde trees are bursting with yellow blooms and have blanketed our front yard in yellow. I spend time every day just watching our trees and the gently falling blossoms. I hung a new bird feeder in one of the trees and am hoping to attract goldfinches. Over the past two weekends we've brought home new plants to add to our backyard garden beds and pots. I've always loved working in the yard but until this year haven't had outdoor space that I enjoyed working in. Now our backyard is the perfect place for puttering and we enjoy the afternoon shade out there most days.

April was a busy month: of birthdays, of audioblogging, and of trying to figure out Maeve's naps. We celebrated our one-year-old and eight-year-old, I'm so proud of creating my audioblog content, and Maeve's naps have improved even if they aren't consistent. But I'm feeling worn out! Plus these last weeks of the spring semester are always really busy for Chris and I usually find myself a bit stressed by association. I've felt frustrated at times lately with the mismatch between the amount of time I'd love to spend writing and podcasting versus the amount of time I have for those things. Having some consistent childcare during my weeks would be a game changer but Maeve has been very slow to warm up to anyone. This week we'll meet a babysitter who has lots of experience with babies and toddlers – I'm hopeful she'll be a good match for Maeve!

My plan for the RISING*SHINING audioblog was to produce podcast episodes for the month of April and then bring it back in October. Instead I'm going to try to continue the audioblog and publish weekly posts/episodes! Thank you so much for your feedback which has encouraged me to continue the project. I think weekly posts should be doable even with the limited work time I have.

May will bring the last month of school and our first 100 degree days. Here comes the heat! But I'm feeling optimistic about making the best of the summer and enjoying the season.

Big things happening in May:

+ Mother's Day. I'm requesting this amazing French toast casserole with a salted frosted flake topping.

+ Chris goes on a guys' trip. We felt comfortable with Chris booking a trip with a small group of vaccinated friends. I'll be solo-parenting for four days and three nights although the trip is Wednesday through Saturday so having school days in there will help.

+ My parents arrive in town. They'll stay for six weeks, hooray!

May goals:

+ Publish one blog post/audioblog episode each week.

+ Make decisions about kitchen renovation. I'm so excited that we've decided to renovated our kitchen but all the decisions overwhelm me. I think we've found who we want to work with (Lowe's) so this month I want to work on making decisions about layout, cabinets, and countertops.

+ Finish 2020 family photo book. This is a continuing goal from April. I'm about half-way through the book and just need to keep chugging along. It'll feel so good to get that done! And then I can move on to making a photo book of Maeve's first year.

+ Clean out/organize closet. Dash has been enjoying sleeping in the office-turned-spare-bedroom which we set up for Chris to sleep in during Maeve's newborn days. The room is now a hybrid of being Dash's bedroom and also an office space (it's where our printer and office supplies live). I'd like to start working on transforming the room into a bedroom for Dash. That means we need to figure out what we can get rid of in the closet and also re-home the things we want to keep (like the printer). The project feels daunting but getting a space organized is always so satisfying.

Recurring monthly goals:

+ A one-on-one date with each of the boys.

+ Three at-home dates with Chris. With Chris's work schedule easing up I hope we'll have more time for day dates. We are usually in bed by 8 p.m. so evening dates are just not working right now for these tired parents. If our new babysitter is a good fit we could even go out to lunch together  – what a treat that would be!

+ Exercise 4x/week. With Orange Theory I can now consistently workout three times per week (two Orange Theory, one Peloton). The fourth one is always a stretch but I want to keep shooting for it.

Happy May, friends!